Lud
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There are countries in the world where Catholicism has struck deeper roots than in Lithuania. Nevertheless, you will never meet such piety of folk and such expression of spirituality that exist in the Cross Hill. A lot of people respect the Hill of Crosses not only as a religious object, but also as the symbol of the nation's spirit, nationality and freedom. Historical, religious and geopolitical...
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The authoress presents the results of her research on press marriage ads. She has identified different research leads; a marriage ad is discussed as a linguistic phenomenon and, first of all, as a cultural phenomenon, in the focus of interest of different areas of humanistic studies. She makes a marriage ad part of the cultural scenario, organizing behaviours that follow the rules of matchmaking,...
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The article describes the genesis and modern manifestations of the involvement of an African state in tribal structures. The description of historical and cultural conditions and political phenomena typical of the entire continent is illustrated with examples from Cameroon. The analysis starts with the concept of post-tribal society, in which elements of culture and social structure, typical of the...
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The basic aim of the article is to analyse and assess the scholarly achievements of the youngest generation of the anthropologists of culture in Poland. The very notion of 'anthropology of culture' relates to a group of scholars active at the beginning of the 1980s. This group, very critical about the conditions of Polish ethnology at the time, formulated a new research programme that opened itself...
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Polish-Georgian contacts have had a long tradition. As early as the 17th and 18th centuries Polish missionaries in Georgia, who also acted as diplomats, wrote reports about Georgia. The most outstanding among them was T.J. Krusinski, a Jesuit, whose work was a source of information about Persia and the Caucasus (including the Georgians) from which Europe has drawn for centuries. Contacts between Poland...
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Ordination and celebration of the first mass is an important moment in the life of a young Catholic priest. Particularly in the rural community this religious ceremony is very special, treated as the 'rite of transition'. The article attempts to reveal and interpret the most important moments of the first mass, and refers to the concept of Arnold van Gennep's 'transition' rites. Despite a different...
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Anthropology, as a systematic critical reflection on popular ways of understanding mechanisms of life, should, according to James Boon, attempt to make more native what is alien and more alien what is native. To do that, it must be equipped with critical distance and irony, ability of critical self-conscious thinking not only about the 'objects' of its research but also about the tools used to describe...
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The author, founder and director of the Institute of Bronislaw Pilsudski's Heritage in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russian Federation, presents the scholarly work and achievements of its patron. Pilsudski, deported to Sakhalin in August 1887 together with other participants of the assassination attempt at tsar Alexander III, stayed in the Russian Far East until November 1905. He collected an abundance of ethnographic...
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The article addresses some problems of rural sexual customs in the early modern times. It is based on village court books and other legal and literary sources. From the end of the 16th century, a particular moral code was gradually being applied to the sexual life of peasants as a result of the pastoral work initiated after the Council of Trent in 1545. The role of the traditional system of values...
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Until the end of the 18th century cultivated plants - cereals and vegetables and various collected plants were the main source of food of rural population. Cereals were the main food - it was the source of flour and groats, the ingredients necessary to make different meals. Changes in the nutrition habits of rural population started in the second half of the 19th century, when potatoes became commonly...
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Moravian Brethren inhabited the borderland between India and Tibet since 1853. Over a century of their presence in this area, the European missionaries triggered cultural changes of different duration. This article describes changes in broadly understood agriculture and cultivation. As part of their activity in the area affected by missionary stations in Kyelong, Lahoul, Poo and Kinnaur, Leh and Ladakh,...
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The text is a free peregrination trying to answer some questions on ethnology of today and author's 'place' in it. He makes an attempt at expressing his own position on ethnology. Assuming that ethnology is a science with limits that are difficult to be determined, he believes that it should be also open to other languages of the discourse. Writing about his favourite authors (R. Barthes, J. Cliffiord,...
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In the first part of the article the authoress presents the theoretical context of her research - the development of the anthropological reflection on cultural gender. In the second part she discusses the method and preliminary results. Research was conducted among members of two woman-led millenaristic religious movements - Brahma Kumaris and the Legion of Small Knights. The process of conversion/involvement...
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Using an anthropological perspective, the authoress analyses the process of adaptation to the immediate space by Polish people hit by the 1997 flood. Places of their residence have been branded with disaster and the feeling of being lost and harmed has been intensified by the awareness of the loss of everything they owned. In order to feel fulfilled in the new situation flood victims had to display...
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The word 'skansen' (an open air museum) belongs to words that have been assimilated and are well known in the Polish language. In museology it has a theoretical and practical meaning, which for over a century has been used in the study and institutional protection of historical wooden buildings. When the idea of A. Hazelius was popularized in Poland and when favourable conditions for the development...
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Mirosława Zakrzewska-Dubasowa's publication of all the witch trials found in the Lublin town records (1947) remains one of the best and most complete sources for the study of witchcraft in Poland. However, a 17th century court book returned to the Lublin archives as late as the 1960s, and thus unavailable to Zakrzewska-Dubasowa includes one trial for witchcraft and theft of the Eucharist. In this...
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The inhabitants of present day Malaysia form a deeply divided community, with respect to social status and socio-economic position. The factors, which lead to the strongest divisions, are of ethnic and racial nature. Malaysia is a country, which is inhabited by at least three separate communities – Malayan, Chinese and Indian. Ethnicity, as is shown by Zakaria Haji Ahmad, a Malayan sociologist, is...
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The article attempts to reconstruct the views of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) about the nation and nationalism and their influence on modern research. Durkheim did not create any cohesive and systematic theory of the nation. These problems were not the most important of his interests and have poor connection with the main line of his theory. Moreover, Durkheim seemed to associate modern societies with...
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In Japan, tradition is constantly interspersed with modernity. Despite the fact that in the past this country evolved into an economic power, the traditional culture is still cultivated. The Japanese tradition of today is a mixture of samurai and bourgeois tradition (which derives from the chonin movement). Despite its origins in the past ages, the tradition as it is today has mostly been shaped by...
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The culture of Polish peasants before 1918 is characterized by mass illiteracy, and for this reason the peasant community can be called an 'oral' community. The author analyses problems connected with the 'orality' of the village, such as regional linguistic differentiation, problems with the propagation of writing and the influence of national language concepts advanced by the intellectuals about...
